As it relates to the Home Care markets, medication compliance is recognized as a major problem in healthcare today. Typically there is no ‘staff’ and little assistance for the ‘home patient’ in managing multiple prescriptions, inventories, and change. The average senior person is prescribed on the order of thirteen different oral medications that must be taken correctly each day. These medications are typically delivered in bulk supply and must be sorted/managed and taken correctly by the individual, leading to numerous errors and omissions, including misusing the medications, taking the medications at the wrong time and/or in the incorrect amount, failing to take the medications at the prescribed time, fatally combining the medications with other medications, under-using the medications, over-using the medications, etc.
The costs associated with such non-compliance are more serious than a number of major illnesses combined. Studies have provided the following facts:                10% of admissions to regular hospitals are due to non-compliance, at a cost of $15 billion a year        30% of hospital admissions for people over the age of 65 are directly caused by non-compliance        Non-compliance causes 125,000 deaths a year—twice as many as auto accidents;        23 to 40% of nursing home admissions are due to noncompliance, inability to take medications at home unsupervised        Half of all prescriptions are taken incorrectly, contributing to prolonged or additional illness        People who miss doses need 3 times as many doctor visits as other and face an average of $2,000 more in medical costs per year        
The fact that the aging population continues to grow combined with the steady increase in the average number of medications prescribed per person indicates that these issues will continue to compound along with the associated costs. Thus, it is clear that a system that automatically dispenses medications to the home patient at the correct time and that further monitors the medication dispensing and reacts in a predetermined manner to a missed medication is needed. Moreover, since the majority of home patients will be taking more than one type of medication at more than one prescribed time, or “hour of administration” (HOA) each day, the system should also be able to easily accept and dispense multiple types of medication and dispense different doses of medication throughout the day.
Furthermore, it is also important that such a system be easy to use. Many home patients are senior persons or persons having disabling illnesses that may not have the ability, strength, or awareness to easily set up and use the system. For instance, a home patient would likely have difficulty loading medications into a dispensing system that has a complicated feed mechanism for dispensing the medications. This would likely deter the home patient from using such a system without the assistance of a nurse or other caregiver. As stated above, there is typically no staff and little assistance for the home patient in complying with medication plans. Thus, it is desirous to provide a system for automatically tracking and dispensing medications in a remote location that is easy to use.